


Thin Air

by Inkfire



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: who-contest, Episode: s08e01 Deep Breath, Gen, Introspection, Mild Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 06:31:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2219367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkfire/pseuds/Inkfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor stands alone, suspended and pondering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thin Air

**Author's Note:**

> And this is where I realize I hadn't posted fic for a month and a half. *facepalm*
> 
> Well. This was written for the prompt "Bad Guys" on the LiveJournal community who_contest. I spent a while feeling hopelessly dry regarding that prompt (and writing in general); I figured I needed something that felt new to write, and can you get newer than Twelve? I don't think so ;P Hence the following scribblings. 
> 
> Spoilers for Deep Breath. If you haven't watched the ep, you probably won't be terribly spoiled, but rather confused.

The breeze drifts across his face, clean and deprived of scent. 

He breathes. Deep. New lungs stretching out, old hearts rumbling. 

The floor seems to be pitching beneath his feet. The restaurant is dismal and hollow, a farce. He is alone; he is aflight. His mere presence fills the room with quietness.

The Doctor walks, soft footsteps echoing. Away from the open door.

He could have closed it, should have perhaps. It is reckless, that rectangular window to the sky, calling. A call he denied was unnatural…

His lives are new, not just his face. A clean start, it seemed, yet furrowed with frowns unbidden. Lives are precious and he protects them… others’ lives that is, innocent lives. Everything has its end and everything dies, he knows; in some cases, the blind struggle of desperation merely leads down a senseless and grim path… In the end one must let go…

Not him, it appears, never him though he did attempt acceptance. Why? He walked to his death with open arms, at the hand of love and hate alike, and his sacrifice was refused; why? His days aren’t done. His journey isn’t complete. His dept remains unpaid.

This is what is left for him, it appears: the good old adventures, fighting the bad guys. The term makes him snort, a quiet sound in the silence. The monsters under the bed, the creepy creatures, and what is he in the face of those? What hero is it that holds death on the tip of his tongue, that leaves its imprint in his footsteps? The dinosaur coughed her own fate out of her throat, before she burned in the night. What else is there?

_The wind bites now, and the world is grey…_

What is he fighting? Not absurdity. Not selfishness. Not fear. 

Perhaps instinct, in the name of what must be—if it is his place to decide of that.

He shivers, and he turns. The breeze is still cold upon his neck. He heads to the control panel. 

He has work to do, and his own ship to find.


End file.
